Sports memorabilia expert gets conned

Collecting autographs and authentic athlete memorabilia is a high-risk, high-reward business, but experienced appraisers can sniff out the scammers most of the time. Mark Mench of Wisconsin has been one of these experts for more than 30 years and encountered a time where he was tricked by a scammer, according to a local FOX affiliate.

"I consider myself very knowledgeable about what a real one and a fake one is," Mench told the source.

Whenever buying merchandise from an individual, doing an online background check can provide many answers. But when Mench found that Carl Meyer was selling an autograph from Steve Prefontaine, a middle and long distance runner who participated in the 1972 Olympics, he had to grab ahold of it.

"A Steve Prefontaine autograph you almost never see," Mench said.

Prefontaine died at age 24 in a car accident, so any authentic merchandise from his short life is of true value. However, when it arrived in the mail, Mench immediately noticed that the items were fake and tried to reach out to Meyer.

It turned out that Meyer has done this to 55 other people. He owed Mench alone $74,000 for the fake memorabilia. Mench did not think to do a background search on Meyer because the way he spoke to Mench, it sounded like "[h]e knew dealers, he knew the business, he knew basically everything I knew about autographs and I've collected 30 years."

Because other sports collectors filed a complaint to the United states Inspection Service, prosecutors were able to charge Meyer for mail fraud. He will spend the next two years in jail.

Though Myer was caught for his crimes, Mench and many others are still waiting to get back thousands of dollars they lost from the sports memorabilia scam. Individuals could have protected themselves from these losses early on if they used Radaris' people search service. Doing this in advance would have shown that others have been ripped off by Meyer's actions in the past.